Wearable: Beddit Sleep Monitor Who’s Tried It: Kimberly, Sara, Alex What It Does: Sleep monitoring, including sleep quality, total sleep time, time to fall asleep, sleep efficiency, heart rate, respiration, sleep cycles, snoring, bed exits, restless sleep indicator Most of the wearables we’ve been trying this summer do some kind of sleep monitoring: the Microsoft Band, the Jawbone series, the Misfit Shine, the Fitbit series, and more. If you wear the devices at night, they report on restless vs. restful [...]

Before electronic activity trackers and step counters arrived on the scene, there were sportwatches. Your old Timex Ironman--an indestructible amalgamation of ancient alien technology--was basically a stopwatch with a wristband. A sportwatch. It told you how much time had elapsed since you started it, how much time remained before the end of an interval you set and subsequently initiated, and—most importantly—it told you the time of day. At the turn of the millennium, Garmin, a company already well-known for its [...]

Tracking steps is a relatively easy thing to do for a wearable: at its core, a step-counter counts bounces. But just like in Inception, we can go deeper into the world of movement tracking. The wearables on your arm, clipped to your belt, and in your pocket all require a little help from above if they want to get a true read on the distance you traveled during a run, hike, walk, bike, etc. For that, we can thank some old [...]

In my introductory post for We Wear It, I said that part of our goal for the 99 days is to help people learn about the wide variety of wearable devices that are available, their various capabilities, how they work for different lifestyles, and how all of this health and fitness data fits into the policy picture. In other words, it’s more than just steps. Wearable: Jawbone Up Move, Jawbone Up 2, Jawbone Up 3, Jawbone Up 4 Who’s Wearing [...]

I've been lucky enough this summer to test our more fitness-/workout-oriented wearables for We Wear It. These particular devices were born to run..or bike, or swim (three things that I occasionally do); some of them don't even count steps the way a Fitbit or iPhone does. The Wahoo TICKR X is one of those: it isn't a wellness wearable in the classic sense; its job is more about tracking your workouts and helping you get fitter, faster, and stronger. Who’s Been Wearing [...]

In my introductory post for We Wear It, I said that part of our goal for the 99 days is to help people learn about the wide variety of wearable devices that are available, their various capabilities, how they work for different lifestyles, and how all of this health and fitness data fits into the policy picture. In other words, it’s more than just steps. This week, let’s talk about the wearable with which most people are familiar: Fitbit. Wearables: [...]